Better Penance With IKEA

We celebrate for two days and two nights. Sin is followed by repentance. I’m an atheist, so I don’t go to confession. My psychotherapist despaired of me years ago and the Way of St James is too crowded for me. Meditation makes me aggressive. I’m afraid of yoga because of the threatening upper arm muscles of some of my friends. So how can I wash myself clean of sin?

I look out of the window. It’s raining. Perfect! I’m going to make a pilgrimage to IKEA. IKEA on a rainy Saturday turns the innermost human being inside out. Deepest abysses and manifold possibilities of repentance lurk around every corner. IKEA on a rainy Saturday is better than any social pedagogy exam.

Phase one: Practise patience! IKEA is always on a motorway. Not to get there faster, but to get there at all. Normal roads cannot cope with streams of IKEA pilgrims. They collapse. Even motorways sometimes, usually around ten after closing time. I drive displeasedly past 10 kilometres of traffic jams of returning morning pilgrims in the wild east. Today, not even the narrowing access lanes in front of the IKEA gate offer opportunities for contemplation. A traffic jam simply won’t form. Apart from the obligatory exit traffic jam. That doesn’t bother me today either. I park at the DIY store opposite.

Phase two: pace yourself! One of the most outstanding strengths of the typical IKEA pilgrim is moderation. He arrives without wishes and goals and returns home with an electric cooker and blisters on his feet. In between are thousands of trials and tribulations, aimlessness and at least three fatal collisions with enemy shopping trolleys. Anyone who survives these is close to moderation. Your wallet may not be laughing because of all the greed, but that’s not so bad, because you have to save money somewhere. Your task: buy rubbish you don’t need and moderate your prices.

Phase three: Follow the path! I love the IKEA route. The inescapability of the perfidious and rigorously executed complete ballooning of offers awakens a feeling of security in me. Left, right, it doesn’t matter, just follow the path! Especially in times of economic crisis and emotional uncertainty, this is the ultimate relaxation. I used to take shortcuts through the fire doors from one department to another. That’s over now. As I get older, I enjoy the flow of the herd following a clearly defined path more and more. I accidentally run over two lads who dared to go against the flow.

Phase four: You shall have no other gods beside me! Your presence in IKEA alone guarantees the fulfilment of this commandment. How cruel home decor was in pre-IKEA times! Everyone had different furniture, the arrangement of different pieces had to be customised. When you were first invited by a couple, you couldn’t even draw conclusions about their creativity when it came to arranging modularised furnishing elements. That’s better today. IKEA is better than communism. IKEA is the multi-resistant germ among furniture stores. Where IKEA opens up, everyone else closes down. IKEA makes everything the same. IKEA, thank you for standardising German living rooms!

Phase five: Mäh! IKEA disappoints me today. No traffic jams, no crowds, the fire doors are all open, and I haven’t had a stupid pretzel run over my toe with its chariot. How am I supposed to do penance? I sit down on a pile of Gilda Blom cushions and wait for a sign to reveal itself to me. Normally this happens all the time. Nine out of ten conversations in the power shopping herd result in useful life lessons for everyday use. Today: nothing. I have to do something. I stand up, head against the flow of pilgrims and let out a loud “meeeeaaaaaaaah!”. A fat cow with a farmer’s wave looks at me questioningly. Nothing else. I drive home. My haul: a banana tree and a hundred of these inconspicuously scented toilet blocks with wicks. Absolution is really something.